Time is opportune to launch campaign to reclaim civil spaces, says HRCP

Showing his concerns over the unprecedented escalation in curbs on freedom of opinion and expression in recent years, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Secretary General Harris Khalique said on Monday it was an opportune time to re-energise the rights body at the district and tehsil levels and connect it with local ongoing citizens’ campaigns and movements.

He was addressing a seminar titled ‘Reclaiming civil spaces; Freedom of association, assembly, and expression’, held at the Karachi Press Club.

The commission organised the seminar while its council member, Akhtar Baloch, moderated the event.

Khalique said that recently organised campaigns, such as the Aurat March and the Students Solidarity March, show that Pakistan had been experiencing a surge in social movements and it was the right time to engage all civil society and trade unions groups, such as the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, to initiate a campaign to end curbs on freedom of expressions and associations.

“In Pakistan, the situation of the 1980s has been repeating although the context and forms of suppression have changed now,” said Khalique, who is also a leading poet and writer.

“Unfortunately, this time, because of weakening of relations among various rights defender groups, journalist bodies and civil society groups, the country is not seeing any vibrant resistance against the curbs.

” He added that it was imperative that rights and civil society groups continue to speak the truth about human rights in Pakistan.

Discussing the curbs on media freedom, the HRCP’s official said that the freedom of expression and the freedom of media were integral to keeping an eye on and protecting human rights.

He said that less than two per cent of the workers had the right to form associations at workplace.

Citing two events held at the Karachi Press Club in the 1980s – the launch of Munir Niazi’s book titled ‘Press in Chains’ and marking the 57th birthday of public poet Habib Jalib – which he attended when he was a student, Khalique said the force of several police stations used to deploy outside the press club at the events with a large number of attendance of people. “Now it is sad to see that police personnel outnumber the social and political activists,” he said.

Dr Riaz Ahmed Shaikh, dean, Faculty of Social Science, at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, said that Pakistan’s academic institutions had also been affected because of curbs of freedom of expression and varsity campuses had now become a space of censorship rather than critical thinking. “Intellectual space on the campuses has been shrinking rapidly because of the rise in repression,” he said.

Shaikh said the academic institutions had been two types of censorship which the state had been imposed through the varsity administration. “One, there are certain topics that should not be taught in the class, and second, conducting activities, seminars and workshops on certain topics are not be allowed,” he said. Other senior HRCP office- bearers Asad Iqbal Butt, Uzma Noorani and Zohra Yusuf and Dr Tausif Ahmed Khan were among the speakers.